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You are making the perfect connection or so you think.
There are excellent synergies and it seems clear (to you anyway) that these two people can be very helpful to one another. You make a cyber introduction and as far as you can tell both individuals will be able to see the benefits of this connection.
Or will they?
I've given introductions in which one or both of the individuals didn’t follow-up with each other.
I've also been on the receiving end of an introduction and despite my timely follow up the other person was unresponsive, even after the person that made the introduction reached out to them.
What's up?
Networking is like an intricate dance. There’s room for some improvisation but make no mistake about it, there are some steps that MUST be followed.
Like following-up.
There’s absolutely no excuse for ignoring an introduction EVEN if on the surface you don’t think that there is much potential. It’s rude and disrespectful to the person that took the time and effort to make the introduction and it is certainly unacceptable to brush off the person to whom you’ve been introduced without any sort of response.
It’s easy enough to send a quick email note to explain the situation; the other person will take your cues.
But as someone that’s been networking effectively for 30 years let me remind you of the old cliché, “you can’t tell a book by its cover.” After all you don’t know much about this person other than their company and what they have shared on LinkedIn. You don’t know about the bigger picture – their past clients and contacts, their relatives and friends, their extended circle of referral sources all of whom might be extremely beneficial for you and your business.
With that in mind do you really want to ignore that introduction?
And if you’re the person that made an introduction and one or both individuals weren’t responsive then you can simply cross them off your list of people to connect in the future. After all, our networking world is so very vast there are bound to be others that would welcome your introductions.